


How To Go On (When You Never Expected To)

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Post-Season/Series 03, Recovery, Regret, Rescue, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 10:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13432959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: In the weeks following The San Lorenzo Job, it doesn't take long for Eliot to get himself into trouble. Fortunately it doesn't take Hardison long to figure out what he's done, and it takes even less time for Nate to find somebody to get him out.





	How To Go On (When You Never Expected To)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musingmidge77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musingmidge77/gifts).



> Kind of mixed your #1 and #2 prompts on this. Eliot and Quinn aren't exactly working together, but I definitely got the Nate and the post Big Bang Job angst in! Hope you enjoy the ride, and thank you for playing with us again this year!

_I can’t do this._ Nate had thought he was strong enough to handle what Eliot was offering him; all the prestige of being a boss with an enforcer of Eliot’s caliber, without having to sell any more of his soul than he’d already bartered away. The problem was that with an enforcer of Eliot’s caliber, there was always going to be a down-side. He was always going to end up here, at a hospital bed-side, trapped once again in his own personal hell.

“He’s lucky to have somebody like you.” Quinn had turned out to have such an easy-going presence that Nate had nearly forgotten he wasn’t alone.

Nate grimaced, struggling against the pull of emotions too tangled for him to deal with properly. “If I’d been on my game, he never would have taken that job.” They’d needed a break after San Lorenzo, and he’d sent off the ones that wanted to physically get away with his blessing. Only Hardison had stayed behind, alternating helping Nate research new clients with upgrading his various systems and playing endless hours of whatever his latest MMO obsession was.

It had been a comfortable break from the pace they’d been setting in trying to bring down Damien Moreau and free themselves from the Italian’s control…until the day Hardison had come to him and reported that he’d lost track of Eliot.

The fact that Hardison kept regular track of their movements was one of those unspoken things the team never openly acknowledged. Nate knew the others found it more than a little creepy, but they all understood that the longer they operated and the more enemies they racked up, the more practical an idea it was.

“You know Eliot doesn’t use guns, right?” he asked, finally trusting himself to meet Quinn’s gaze.

The other hitter looked momentarily startled by the question, but he recovered swiftly. “I’d heard rumors. Something about an incident in Belgrade some years ago.”

 _”You think you know what I've done? The worst thing I ever did in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau. And I -- I'll never be clean of that.”_ Chasing Moreau had opened up wounds in Eliot much deeper than any of them had suspected. “He had to pick up a gun recently, when we were on a job in DC. Saved my life.” And killed more people in the process than Nate expected he would ever know for certain.

The mastermind realized abruptly that he had been expecting Quinn to laugh off his fears, to say that he was being ridiculous assuming any connection between Eliot taking up a gun and seeking out a job that had him barely clinging to life. The fact that he didn’t was sobering in the extreme.

“IYS was a paycheck,” Quinn said, finally. “Most of the people you work for in this business end up being little more than that. He gestured at Eliot. “I’m good and I talk a really good game, but I know the only reason I beat him as bad as I did when we fought was because his mind wasn’t on beating me.”

He nodded at Nate. “His focus was on warning you. He cares. Probably more than he should, but when you do what we do, finding anyone you can genuinely believe in as well as work for is a gift.”  
*****************************  
Even now, Quinn wondered what Eliot would have said about Nate walking alone into that particular bar and dropping an envelope full of a shattering amount of cash on the table. At the time he’d been far too drunk to appreciate how few fucks Nate Ford generally gave about his personal safety.

“I understand you’re the man to talk to about work in Eastern Europe,” Nate had said, cutting immediately to the heart of the matter. “One of my people is missing. I need him found and returned.”

Even drunk, Quinn realized immediately who Nate had been talking about. He was fairly certain anyone who had spent more than ten minutes listening to James Sterling rant about Nathan Ford would know the man on sight. And if Nate was coming to him for a retrieval instead of dispatching Eliot, it stood to reason…

Ford’s intel had been impressive by anyone’s standards. It tracked Eliot into the mountains of the Ukraine, in the company of a diverse group of mercenaries known for taking on the sorts of jobs governments didn’t own up to in the light of day. _Must have owed somebody a favor,_ he’d thought at the time. People in Eliot’s position could afford to have standards when it came to who they worked for, and considering his place with Nate’s team it wasn’t the kind of job any person in their right mind would have taken.

The majority of the team had emerged nearly ten days later and promptly scattered. Eliot wasn’t among them, and hadn’t been seen anywhere since.

He’d taken the job, but not before asking the obvious question: “Why me?”

“I do my research,” Ford had told him. “Not only are you the man to see when it comes to Eastern Europe, where Eliot is still apparently counted an expert in the Middle East, you have a strong reputation for honoring your contracts. I may not agree with your choice of clients, but I’ve found no evidence that you will screw me once you take my cash.”

As explanations went it was blunt and dispassionate, and Quinn had promptly swept the envelope from the table into an inner pocket of his jacket.  
******************************************  
 _”You’re not that man anymore.”_

His feelings for Sophie Devereaux – hell for all of them – had changed forever in that moment. She had said the words, but none of the others, not even Hardison, who had the least reason to trust him at that point, had argued with her. He loved them, crazy as they were, and knew going forward that he would lay down his life for any of them.

 _”The others – they don’t need to know what I did.”_ Thirty-seven of Moreau’s men had lost their lives in that DC warehouse, and Eliot had been left with a horrible realization. He might be willing to lay down his life for Nate and the others, but the truth was that more often than not he would end up killing for them. It was the way of things; it was who he was.

His captors had started by shouting questions at him – in Ukrainian first, then in English when he didn’t respond. Next had come the stress positions; hours spent on his knees, with his arms elevated high enough behind his back that the muscles in his shoulders and back quivered on the edge of tearing.

The first slice of the knife into his flesh had almost been a relief. He slipped into a twilight state, only dimly aware of each subsequent cut, blow, or question yelled into his ears.

Oblivion followed soon after. He’d already accepted that he wouldn’t be waking up.

 _Hospital…_ Eliot flexed his hands against clean sheets, brain quickly registering splints on three of her fingers and bandages wrapping both his wrists.

 _Oxygen…painkillers…_ His throat felt like sandpaper, and based on how his thoughts kept wanting to float off he was pretty sure they had him on morphine. That was going to have to change, and fast. Eliot hated morphine. It made him careless and emotional, prone to saying things he would never admit to in his right mind.

When his eyes finally opened, the sight of Quinn in a chair at his bedside was almost as big a surprise as the fact that he was alive at all. “What..what happened?”

Quinn came upright immediately, half out of his chair. “Damn. Let me get a doctor.”

Eliot moved automatically, reaching out to grab Quinn’s hand before he could move out of range. “Talk first.”

He saw a flash of doubt cross the other man’s face, but clearly Quinn understood what he would want from Eliot were their positions reversed. “I was hired to retrieve you from those idiots in the Ukraine. Took some doing – I was almost too late.”

That lined up with what Eliot could remember of his condition before he’d passed out. And somebody had ‘hired’ Quinn to save him. His first conscious thought was Vance, but even as the colonel’s name crossed his mind, he felt the hand of Nate and the others in the mix. He swallowed a few times, trying to soften the rasp in his throat; Quinn caught on after a moment and poured him out some water.

“I’ll see if they have something better,” he said, laughing softly when Eliot couldn’t help making a face.

“’s all right,” he said, once Quinn took the straw away. “Does the job. Where’s Nate?”

He wasn’t sure how he felt when Quinn admitted that the mastermind had returned to Boston, but when the other hitter mentioned that Nate had seemed like he was barely holding it together it triggered Eliot’s memory of Nate’s issue with hospitals. “He did extend my contract through whatever rehab the doctors think it’s going to take to get you back on your feet.”

Eliot groaned. “And I’m betting that’s not nearly as small a number as I’d like it to be.”  
**************************************  
It wasn’t. The stress positions his captors had forced him into had put an ugly amount of strain on his back and shoulders, resulting in a tear in his left rotator cuff bad enough to require surgery.

Once he regained enough of his strength and awareness to convince the doctors to back off the morphine, Eliot proved to be just as horrible a patient as Quinn would have expected.

“You know, you don’t have to sit there while I go through this,” he snarled. The therapist was the third assigned to oversee his recovery, and it was the first day he’d agreed to let Eliot work with a five-pound hand-weight. Not wanting to risk setting back his progress even further meant that Quinn was the safest target of his frustration.

For his part, Quinn was prepared to take whatever Eliot dished out so long as it kept him moving in the direction he needed to go. “What’s so fascinating on that stupid phone anyway?” Eliot snapped as his therapist switched him to working on his other arm.

Quinn glanced up at that, grinning. “A list of all the things Sophie’s going to do to you if you don’t start behaving yourself. And a list of her contact numbers I’m supposed to keep on speed dial.” Eliot would later insist that the red that stained his cheeks was a result of physical exertion, not embarrassment at how effective Sophie’s threats would prove to be. 

As a rule, Quinn only took on babysitting jobs to pay the bills, but as days stretched into weeks and Eliot came to accept his situation, he learned that the other hitter was a man of unexpected depth. Nate had put enough money in his account for Quinn to have dinner sent in every evening – bypassing the hospital’s regular menu at least once a day. This meant that after a day of frustrating himself, Eliot was able to relax. It was in these hours that some of his defenses began to soften.

“This is good,” he acknowledged one night as they shared dinner. “I would have braised the carrots though, instead of trusting the sauce to do the job.” He paused, frowning as a lock of his hair fell across his face. Two attempts to twitch it back failed, and when he reached up to do the job, the resulting pain brought Eliot up short, gasping.

Quinn moved immediately to Eliot’s bedside, gathering up his hair and smoothing it back. Snatching up a hair-tie from the bedside table, he bound it into a quick, neat ponytail.

“Thank you,” Eliot said quietly. Quinn patted him briefly on the shoulder, then took his seat again.

“How come you keep it so long?” He took up his plate again. “I get that it’s part of the look, but it can’t be practical when you’re working.”

It took Quinn a moment to realize that Eliot was staring resolutely at his plate, his expression a tangle of raw, bloody emotions. “Damien always insisted I keep it short.” After a long moment of silence, a massive shudder rippled through his body, and he seemed to come back to himself. “Anyway,” he said, managing to look up at Quinn again, “thanks.”

 _Moreau._ The devil whose hold on Eliot’s soul had brought him to this point. “You know,” Quinn said, keeping his voice casual, “Ford thinks it means something, you taking this job on the heels of you guys bringing down Moreau.”

Eliot was silent for a long moment, but he didn’t look away. Finally he said, “Nate’s a pretty observant guy.”  
*****************************  
He wasn’t used to this many people having his number, as his mother used to say. Eliot tried to focus on finishing his dinner, but suddenly even the thought of food was enough to turn his stomach. “Maybe I should convince them I need a shot of morphine,” he said, chuckling bitterly as he set his plate aside. “Some things are easier to talk about when you can blame them on the drugs.”

Quinn’s expression hadn’t shifted, which Eliot found perversely steadying. “I’m not your priest, Eliot,” he said, “but I’m a pretty good listener, and I doubt you can tell me anything that’s going to shock me.”

That, Eliot believed. But, “You’re not the one I need to be telling these things to.”

“No,” Quinn allowed, setting his plate aside, “but after watching how ripped up Nate is about this whole thing, you both could probably do with a little practice.”

He wasn’t wrong.


End file.
